Once I had left my job in the beginning of 2012, I needed to take a break. I could no longer handle the amount of stress that I was under and this was one of the main reasons why I had to walk away.

Up until this point, I had only written about one or two articles a week. Now that I had more time, I started to write more frequently, and this was a time when I started to become more connected to what I was doing.

The Next Level

This all changed when the relationship that I was in at the beginning of 2013 came to an end. I had thought that writing one or two a week was enough, yet this was no longer the case.

I now had the desire to write about four or five articles a week, and the more articles I wrote the easier it became. My mind was now at a point where it had been trained to recognise patterns and then to come up with article titles shortly after.

It Took Over

I grew up in an environment where my true-self wasn’t given the chance to see the light of day, and this meant that I had the need to be free to be me and to no longer play a role. However, while this was what I truly wanted, I soon ended up taking on another role.

Before I knew it, I saw myself as a writer, and while I enjoyed writing this was not what I wanted. Due to this, I would often say that I write about psychology when people asked me what I did; if I had said that I was a writer, I would be playing another role.

It Gave Me an Identity

Even so, part of me was only too pleased that I now had an identity that allowed me to feel good about myself and even to look good. Through having this need, it caused me to experience conflict.

Before I started writing I didn’t feel as though I had any value, and this had all changed now that I was writing articles. At this point in time, I didn’t believe that there was another option.

I Had Become a Machine

Around a year after this, I started to write every day, and I only felt good about myself if this had taken place. Deep down, I was doing everything I could to prove to myself that I wasn’t worthless and that I had value.

I believed that once I had written enough articles and books, I would get to a point where I would no longer feel the same. I wasn’t a human being, I was a human doing, and this was how I had been for many, many years.

Conditional Love

When I was a child, I had to do as I was told and to help around our guest house; if I didn’t do this, I would have been harmed in some way. My value was based on what I did, not on who I was.

As a result to this, I had to do things in order to receive positive feedback from my parents. Ultimately, I was an object that existed to fulfil my mother’s needs, and my father made sure that I did as I was told.

The Same Story

So, while I was no longer a child, I was still behaving in the same way. But no matter how many articles or books I produced, it wasn’t possible for me to change how I felt at a deeper level.

I continued to battle with how I felt and in 2015, I ended up coming into contact with someone called Wain. He was only too aware of what was going on and there were times when he would ask me what motivated me to write so much.

Stepping Back

I had thought about why I felt compelled to write so much, but it wasn’t something that I had been able to do anything about. This was primarily because I was I was carrying so much toxic shame.

It didn’t really matter what I thought - my emotional body was carrying far too much pain. Nevertheless, speaking to him did give me the chance to see things differently as time passed, and I ended up coming into contact with someone who would make a massive difference to my life.

The Real Deal

This was a healer/therapist called Ben Ralston, who understood what I was going through. It didn’t end there, though, as he also had the ability to do something about what was taking place within me.

I had been trying to deal with the toxic shame that was within me for a number of years, but what I had done hadn’t had much of an effect. I was not only amazed by what was taking place, I also felt incredibly grateful that I had found someone who could assist me in this way.

A New Beginning

Over time, I started to feel like a human being as opposed to a human doing, perhaps for the first time in my life. In addition to this, I started to talk to myself better and I no longer felt as bad about myself, amongst other things.

If this hadn’t taken place, I don’t think I would have written this article, or any of the other articles that are like this. I would still be carrying so much shame and the last thing I would have wanted to do would have been to open up to the world. ​

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Thank you for your openness and honest. I have felt worthless my entire life, and nothing I accomplished had meaning to me. I've read your articles on relationships and worthlessness and can relate very much to both.

I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder 18 years ago, but nobody explained it to me or told me why I had it. Instead, they judged me as being a worthless and disgusting person, and I've wasted the last 18 struggling with an opiate pill and Klonopin addiction. I developed this because of the worthlessness and emptiness I fell inside when I'm not actively engaged with someone and the modeling my father provided that this was the way one dealt with stress instead of talking about it. My father was Borderline also, as were at least 2 of his siblings and a few cousins of mine in the same bloodline.

Currently I'm recovering from a suicide attempt, which ended me up in assisted living care because no one trusts me not to do a repeat performance. There are little opportunities here for emotionally healthy conversations. I'm surrounded by concrete thinking and aggressive behaviors (who keep baiting me but I am in adult mode at the moment). I never hit anyone before in my life that I can remember, and I'm not planning on starting. I have to be careful what I say because everything is interpreted literally. This is like a foreign planet to me. I keep reminding myself of something Aristotle said about "Anyone can be angry-that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, at the right degree, the right time, the right purpose, and in the right way-that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." (Something like that.) That seems to be one of the hallmarks of making my interactions with other people better, as it is the root of my negativity talk.

I'm a former registered nurse, and have 2 college degrees, but I've let the unresolved past rule my life. My entire life has been one long struggle to heal from the pain and shame of childhood abuse in of all categories but for the first time in my life I realize and believe I can experience the pain without shoving a drink or pill down my throat or re-repressing it. Before now, when I didn't deal with it, I took it out on myself and sometimes people whose behaviors, appearance, voice, or were otherwise associated with it in some lingering way. I had an 8-year relationship with a "daddy-replacement" who was emotionally unavailable, and I've dated numerous men since, but couldn't emotionally engaged with them. My emotions are saying my life is hopeless and it's tired of hurting, but my thoughts are saying "okay, what you're feeling is real and understandable, but we are not finished with this game yet." My life is not over, and just because my parents and their's before that were messed up emotionally, there is always hope for me until my last breath. I will never give up, because I am worth more than that I've actually had a lot of therapy, but EMDR didn't work well before now because I fought feeling that hurt I unconsciously believed was going to literally blow up my brain in its intensity. No one ever told me this; I journaled it out. I was actually looking for a diagnosis with a curative pill so I wouldn't have to feel the pain, and have some mouth twitching as a adverse effect. I'm currently taking something for depression, but not the drugs that caused me problems. Until these last few years effective therapy for BPD wan't available to me. There is no magic pill to cure emotional immaturity, which is what it takes to have emotionally mature relationships. I sure don't want to find another person to meet my needs for me, because I want to attract a real emotionally adult man who has worked through his own issues to the point that he doesn't consciously or unconsciously expect me to be his Mom. I am still struggling a bit with the craving to have my dead father and my living brother confess that they sexually abused me, and ask for my forgiveness in order to be able to put that bag of pain down on my life's path and move on forward. But I've waited so long (and I hear myself saying this as I tell you, which is how healing works for me) for that apology for which I've burned down so many bridges waiting for, that had potentially wonderful opportunities . . .

There are hurting people all around me, and I can't believe that I am the only one who feels this way. My desire is to get it all out, and tell others about it as I heal and resume life so that maybe at least a few can gain strength from my journey and know that they, too, are not alone.

I'm just starting to study "A Conscious Rethink", Stacy Peershall's work, and Mark Hanson's archives further, as well as your material I discovered today. I live in North Carolina, USA currently.

I recently saw a movie called "The Shack" about PTSD . . . It changed my life forever. It gave me permission to tell the world that a proper little Christian 7 ye

This stood out "My emotions are saying my life is hopeless and it's tired of hurting, but my thoughts are saying "okay, what you're feeling is real and understandable, but we are not finished with this game yet." This Is how I have always seen it. And as you know, the adult part of us is containing the emotional part, doing its best to keep it on track.

"My life is not over, and just because my parents and their's before that were messed up emotionally, there is always hope for me until my last breath. I will never give up, because I am worth more than that". This is the key....Never giving up, no matter what!

I have been to America a number of times.

This has been an inspiring comment, and I believe you can inspire a lot of people. Keep going and dont give up!